The Devil's Pool eBook

“Suppose she was a widow herself, Germain? what
do you say to a widow without children, and a snug
little property?”

“I don’t know of any just now in our parish.”

“Nor do I, but there are other places.”

“You have some one in view, father; so tell
me at once who it is.”

IV

GERMAIN, THE CUNNING PLOUGHMAN

“Yes, I have some one in view,” replied
Pere Maurice. “It’s one Leonard,
widow of one Guerin, who lives at Fourche.”

“I don’t know the woman or the place,”
replied Germain, resigned, but becoming more and more
depressed.

“Her name is Catherine, like your deceased wife’s.”

“Catherine? Yes, I shall enjoy having to
say that name: Catherine! And yet, if I
can’t love her as well as I loved the other,
it will cause me more pain than pleasure, for it will
remind me of her too often.”

“I tell you that you will love her: she’s
a good creature, a woman with a big heart; I haven’t
seen her for a long time, she wasn’t a bad-looking
girl then; but she is no longer young, she is thirty-two.
She belongs to a good family, all fine people, and
she has eight or ten thousand francs in land which
she would be glad to sell, and buy other land where
she goes to live; for she, too, is thinking of marrying
again, and I know that, if her disposition should suit
you, she wouldn’t think you a bad match.”

“So you have arranged it all?”

“Yes, subject to the judgment of you two; and
that is what you must ask each other after you are
acquainted. The woman’s father is a distant
relation of mine and has been a very close friend.
You know him, don’t you—­Pere Leonard?”

“Yes, I have seen him talking with you at the
fairs, and at the last one you breakfasted together:
is this what you were talking about at such length?”

“To be sure; he watched you selling your cattle
and thought you did the business very well, that you
were a fine-appearing fellow, that you seemed active
and shrewd; and when I told him all that you are and
how well you have behaved to us during the eight years
we’ve lived and worked together, without ever
an angry or discontented word, he took it into his
head that you must marry his daughter; and the plan
suits me, too, I confess, considering the good reputation
she has, the integrity of her family, and what I know
about their circumstances.”

“I see, Pere Maurice, that you think a little
about worldly goods.”

“Of course I think about them. Don’t
you?”

“I will think about them, if you choose, to
please you; but you know that, for my part, I never
trouble myself about what is or is not coming to me
in our profits. I don’t understand about
making a division, and my head isn’t good for
such things. I know about the land and cattle
and horses and seed and fodder and threshing.
As for sheep and vines and gardening, the niceties
of farming, and small profits, all that, you know,
is your son’s business, and I don’t interfere
much in it. As for money, my memory is short,
and I prefer to yield everything rather than dispute
about thine and mine. I should be afraid of making
a mistake and claiming what is not due me, and if
matters were not simple and clear, I should never
find my way through them.”